On Tuesday, October 27th, ISET hosted Zurab Tchiaberashvili, former Mayor of Tbilisi, former Minister of Health and Social Affairs of Georgia, and current professor at Ilia State University. Mr. Tchiaberashvili delivered a presentation titled “Healthcare in Georgia: Challenges Ahead.”

Mr. Tchiaberashvili talked about Georgian healthcare systems Georgia transitioned through during different time periods. Using the data from different studies he showed that, while the healthcare system in 2004-2005 benefited reach more than the poor, during 2006-2007, with the introduction of the new system, the situation changed. In short, Georgia’s poor became better recipients of the assistance.

One of the main points of the presentation was the difference between the healthcare systems’ schemes during the two last periods of governance. In 2009-2012 years, the system channeled money from the government to insurance companies and then to the hospitals. As. Mr. Tchiaberashvili explained, that Insurance companies tend to decrease payments, while Hospitals always tend to increase them. Such a situation creates an institutional “clash” which, in its turn, helps the government to minimize healthcare expenditures. However, under the current scheme where the insurance companies were cut out of the process, the system became quite inefficient and resulted in the overutilization of state health funds. Mr. Tchiaberashvili indicated that this issue was one of the reasons for yearly increases in the state healthcare budget from 2013-2015. Hospitals were charging the government directly, omitting the important step of payment control by insurance companies.

Mr. Tchiaberashvili concluded that there are two main challenges of the healthcare systems: overutilization i.e. high cost of healthcare and not proper targets when rich people benefit more than poor.

ISET community would like to thank Zurab Tchiaberashvili for providing insights into the Georgian healthcare situation and for his fruitful question-answer session.